Will the fair Euphronia also have undergone fifteen transmigrations, and will her charms have continued unimpaired?"

"It is difficult to pronounce," said they, "for should the maiden, through the exercise of virtue, have merited to be born as a white elephant, her transmigrations must in the order of nature be but few; whereas should she have unfortunately become and remained a rat, a frog, or other shortlived animal, they cannot but be exceedingly numerous.

" "The prospect of wedding a frog at the end of fifteen transmigrations," said the youths, "doth not in any respect commend itself to us.

A meddling old lady, who used to visit his mother and was possessed of a curious belief in a future transmigration to our satellitethe bleakness of whose scenery she had not realizedhaving given him some cause of offence, he stormed out to his nurse that he "could not bear the sight of the witch," and vented his wrath in the quatrain.

Besides the severe penalties, which it was in the power of the ecclesiastics to inflict in this world, they inculcated the eternal transmigration of souls; and thereby extended their authority as far as the fears of their timorous votaries.

All the kings of China and the Indies believe in the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, as an article of their religion, of which the following story, related by a person of credibility, is a singular instance.

In the kingdom of the Balhara, and all the other kingdoms of the Indies, there are men who burn themselves in consequence of their belief in the doctrine of transmigration.

You have so kept the original strength of his thought, that it almost tempts a man to believe the transmigration of souls.

The swift transmigration from the blatant street to a drawing-room had a startling effect on him: it caused him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot.

I then better'd my Condition a little, and lived a whole Summer in the Shape of a Bee; but being tired with the painful and penurious Life I had undergone in my two last Transmigrations, I fell into the other Extream, and turned Drone.

I might tell you of many other Transmigrations which I went thro: how I was a Town-Rake, and afterwards did Penance in a Bay Gelding for ten Years; as also how I was a Taylor, a Shrimp, and a Tom-tit.

Hereupon succeeded the transmigration of souls; every animal and every plant was animated by one of the fallen angels, and the remarkable amiability of the Hindoos towards animals is owing to this belief.

It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, doctrine of transmigration.

But, in very truth, the elements were unaltered by their many transmigrations.

In the course of their transmigrations, the elements of a worthless individual may get into far better company than they have before enjoyed,may enter into brains that immortalize their owner and redeem the errors of the old possessor.

As long as a widow lives she must serve as a slave to the remainder of the family, she must wear mourning, be tabooed from society, be deprived of all pleasures and comforts, and practice never-ending austerities, so that after death she may escape transmigration into the body of a reptile, an insect or a toad.

Do you remember a story in 'Evenings at Home,' called the Transmigrations of Indra?

Are still stern consorts by her barbarous side; And poverty, sorrow, and desolation, Follow her army's bloody transmigration.

The belief in the power of penance, which was supposed to confer on the person practising it not merely personal sanctity, but even great supernatural powers, was very generally entertained among the Hindoos, and is often alluded to here; as is also transmigration, or the birth of the soul after death in a new body, human or brute.

The Brahminical doctrine was, that "light and darkness are esteemed the world's eternal ways; he who walketh in the former returneth not; that is to say, he goeth to eternal bliss; whilst he who walketh in the latter cometh back again upon earth," and is thus destined to pass through further transmigrations, until his soul is perfectly purified by light.[103]

The Transmigration of Souls CLXV.

I then better'd my Condition a little, and lived a whole Summer in the Shape of a Bee; but being tired with the painful and penurious Life I had undergone in my two last Transmigrations, I fell into the other Extream, and turned Drone.

I might tell you of many other Transmigrations which I went thro: how I was a Town-Rake, and afterwards did Penance in a Bay Gelding for ten Years; as also how I was a Taylor, a Shrimp, and a Tom-tit.

The believer in the doctrine of transmigration of souls carefully avoided this article of food, in the fear of submitting beloved friends to the ordeal of mastication.

One can watch its transmigrations through three lives.